You can still get out of this.
Pick the lock. You need to pick the lock.
How?
Beside me, Daniel is struggling to get away, but that’s a mistake because he’s using up the precious oxygen in his blood. You want to stop moving. That’s the secret.
Hang on, Jev.
His hand goes for my throat. I try to pull it away, but he’s stronger than I am.
Not like this, Jev.
Don’t let it end like this.
Again I try to pry off his hand but can’t.
The water is too cloudy for me to see him anymore, but I can feel him squeezing harder. He jerks again at the cuffs, but then his grip on my throat begins to weaken. A moment later his arm goes slack and he begins to shake uncontrollably. I know what’s happening, what he’s going through. I’ve been there myself. It’ll go on for a few more seconds.
And then it will stop.
Which it does.
They died like this. Your boys did. And Rachel did too. Drowning in that minivan.
How much time?
Thirty seconds.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Cuffed to him like this, I can’t think of a way to get out. My first thought is to try to get his body out of the vehicle and swim it to the surface, but I have very little air left in my lungs, the current is strong, and I’m exhausted. I’d never make it.
This is your punishment for not stopping Rachel. Dying like your family did.
Drowning.
All is dark and cold as the SUV comes to rest on the river bottom.
My strength is fading.
I’m sorry, Rachel. I’m sorry, Tony. Drew. I loved you.
I do love you—
Relax.
Maybe I deserve to die.
I hear Charlene’s words: Stop hating yourself… Rachel had problems… She was ill… Something broke inside of her and she didn’t have the chance to get it fixed.
Death always wins in the end.
It was her choice, Jevin, not yours.
Death always wins.
Yes.
In the end.
I did love you, Rachel. I do. I can’t help it.
But I couldn’t save her.
No one could.
I think of the two women. Rachel, Charlene. One gone. The other waiting for me. Three lives wound around each other. Destinies intermingled.
Entangled.
I think of how much the death of those I loved affected me, wonder how much my death will affect Charlene.
You can postpone death, but you cannot conquer it. Only one person, the one who rose, ever has.
One day death will have its way with me.
But that doesn’t need to be today.
You’re an escape artist, Jevin Banks. So escape.
Yeah, I think I will.
Pick the lock. You have to pick the lock.
I don’t have anything with me to—
Well—
Except for one thing.
The car key.
But not the key exactly.
What it’s attached to.
Convergence
With my free hand I feel for the key, find the looped wire ring that connects it to the keyless entry fob. I try to twist it from the ignition, but the car is still in drive. I pop it into neutral, remove the key.
My air is giving out fast. I don’t have long.
Stay calm, Jevin.
Lower your heart rate.
Just like you used to. In your show.
But a torrent of air bursts up from my mouth.
No! Come on, focus!
The wire resists at first, but when I jam my fingernail in and twist, it uncurls a little bit. I don’t need to unloop it all the way, just enough to get it into the handcuff’s lock.
It takes a few seconds, a few precious seconds, but I manage, and once it’s in the lock mechanism, my fingers know what to do. Instinct.
The cuff snaps open, I pull my hand free from the assassin’s corpse and snake my way out the open window, then push off the side of the SUV with my feet to propel myself toward the surface. I stroke as best I can with my broken ribs, and as soon as my head breaks through, I sputter and gasp for breath.
The current has pulled me toward the middle of the river, and the bank is more than fifty feet away.
With the water moving this fast and as weak as I am, it won’t be easy to make it that far.
I hear my name and see Charlene, cuffs gone, sprinting along the shoreline. I’m too out of breath to reply, but pivot in the current and start to swim toward her.
Fighting the current is tough. I wish I’d done laps with her this last year, kept in shape for swimming. I manage a few strokes but that’s it. I’m too weak, it hurts too much, strains the muscles around my fractured ribs.
I begin to sink again, and the last thing I see before the dark water swallows me is Charlene throwing off her jacket and rushing toward the water.
Riah stared at Darren’s body, the trocar still embedded in his side, still pumping embalming fluid into his corpse.
She’d always wondered what it would be like to kill a human being. And now she knew.
It felt like nothing. No more impactful or moving than tying her shoes or putting on makeup.
Watching him while it happened had only made her wonder how long he would twitch before he stopped quivering for good, just like that snake’s body that she held when she was a girl.
Killed but not yet dead.
But now Darren was both.
Finally, she turned off the pump.
Leaving the funeral home, she saw that the SUV was gone. Tire tracks led to the river, but none of the three people — Daniel, Mr. Banks, or Ms. Antioch — were anywhere to be seen. Perhaps they all drowned. That would be unfortunate if they had other things they were hoping to accomplish today.
She had killed one person and could kill again. She could kill her father. Yes, she could do it and feel no remorse whatsoever.
Now you know. Do it for Katie.
At her apartment she already had the items she would need to restrain him while she did her work — the things she’d acquired for her sleepover with Cyrus.
He raped Katie, the incestuous pedophile sexually abused and raped both of his daughters.
Both of them. So many times. He impregnated his youngest daughter and caused her to stop believing in love.
Perhaps killing him was the closest Riah would come, could ever come, to loving her sister and even her dead mother.
It wasn’t much, but it was something. Yes, human beings do want to love and be loved. To experience the real thing. Riah had wanted that for herself but had been unable to ever attain it or express it. But even if she couldn’t, she could at least act on behalf of justice, on behalf of those she wished she could have cared about.
Planning how she would take care of her father, Riah Colette, the psychopath, left the funeral home to get the items she would be needing from her apartment.
The president’s speech was postponed. The police disbanded the crowd and thoroughly searched the rooftop as well as the pavement below, but they found no sign of the man who’d leaned off the edge of the Franklin Grand Hotel, exploded, and apparently disintegrated in midair.